The most surprising thing about FWB Fest was that it felt like the kind of music festival that justifies the continued existence of music festivals. Thrown by the "DAO" ("decentralized autonomous organization") known as "FWB" ("Friends With Benefits," unaffiliated with either the movie(s) or the TV show(s) [???]) in the Southern California enclave of Idyllwild Arts Academy, FWB Fest superficially avoided all the things that make the modern festival-going experience a nightmare. The grounds were secluded but not remote; the canopy coverage of Idyllwild's thick groves shielded the crowds from the 90-100F day temps; aesthetic touches presumably provided by FORM, the production team that used to run the experimental art-music festival Arcosanti (on hold since 2020), transformed the forest into—
Let me be blunt: I spent the past weekend at "crypto's Woodstock," where a smattering of modern music’s avant-garde performed under the gently fluttering mushroom gill coverings in the sage-burned forests of inland southern California.
Hi! Over the past decade I've "had" a lot of "jobs" — mailroom clerk, boba barista, call center operator, the night editor of Cosmopolitan dot com (dark lol!), summer camp teacher, young adult fiction author (this is the part where I very politely ask you to buy my book BEATING HEART BABY from a local bookseller or to borrow it from your local library), flower hauler, and "more." But all of those jobs are/were second or third jobs on top of thee thing that got me into writing: music! journalism!
Many of you have bore witness to my downward spirals about particular songs, albums, and artists (don't talk to me about Utada Hikaru unless you've got Time), in feverish IRL rants or equally feverish URL missives. Like many of you, I use music as currency, as love letter, as mantra. I've devoted my life to enriching its altar, or something like that. Because my artistic practice in total, which has become the mutant backbone-foundation of my life, grew from the seed of music.
